It Would Be Back to Normal
by Izzy
Summary: The lives of three women living on Deep Space 9 in the Kelvin universe.
1. The Nissians

The Dabo girl known to most people left in the galaxy as Storm had many talents, including the ability to let everyone know when she was in a bad mood. The whole bar found out when she began yelling at the Nausicaans.

"I have never, never in all my life," she was screaming, since if one is really going to be so foolish as to yell at a bunch of Nausicaans, one might as well do so at the top of one's lungs, as it won't really make much of a difference in their reaction, "and I mean _never_, run up against such a group of uncouth, arrogant brutes! Finding loud fault with the dishes and talking to me about it as if it were my fault, 'accidently' tripping my outfit tails and laughing at me, and if that's a sexual advance I can tell you right now none of you are ever going to touch me-"

Whatever else they had done wrong the crowd of goggling onlookers who had leant the foolish female their eyes and ears never found out, because by this time the leader of the group of Nausicaans had gotten up, and now yelled, "I'll touch you!" and whacked her so hard against the face she fell over. "And then I'll touch you again!"

"Touch" probably wasn't a good verb to apply to the way he was pummeling her, with the others joining in, while crowd gasped and yelled. On the other side of the bar, a pale female in a blue Starfleet uniform top that exactly matched her hair color stood up and tried to fight her way past her fellow patrons.

She didn't make much progress, but one inhabitant of Deep Space 9 had the ability to get quickly through any crowd he pleased, and within moments Constable Odo was pulling the Nausicaans off the Dabo girl, winding his extended arms around them multiple times. A few minutes later he had escorted them out with the aid of his deputies, and Nurse Kolana Mincet was carefully ignoring him, as she always did at times like this.

She was trying to examine Storm without injuring her further. When even brushing her fingers against a seemingly undamaged bit of pale green skin caused the delicate Nissian to cringe back, she made an observation of the tricorder data and tapped her combadge. "Mincet to Engineering. I need a site-to-site transport. Lock onto my signal and the Nissian's and beam us both to the Infirmary."

Engineering did their job well. Storm materialized right on the biobed, where she lay without responding at all to her change of location. But her eyes followed Kolana as she moved about the Infirmary, and after a minute or so, she asked about the tricorder's verdict.

"A good deal of internal bleeding, but you were lucky. Why did you go off at the Nausicaans?"

"You would have too, if they'd treated you the way they treated me. I can't stand the males of big and bulky races. Always puffed up with their own physical power." She smiled wanly at Kolana. "We, the delicate females of the galaxy, ought to understand each other."

Actually, Kolana Mincet could easily have taken down twice the number of Nausicaans that Storm had confronted. But there was no way for the innocent Dabo girl to know that. Kolana's species had evolved in one hemisphere of a tidally locked planet, and so could survive in conditions dark and cold enough to kill most other species, but physically they weren't very strong or tough, especially in hotter, brighter Class-M conditions, and while Starfleet had trained her to take on opponents bigger than her, there was a limit to what she was supposed to be able to do from that.

"Speaking of which, isn't it about time for you to recharge that implant of yours?"

"It can wait a few minutes. It would have had I had to walk here." She had set to work by now healing the internal bleeding. Under her instruments the surface bruises also disappeared. "I've survived a surprising amount of time with it depleted." She wasn't about to mention how long, or that it had been for training purposes.

"Can't be very comfortable though, can it?"

"No," Kolana admitted, smiling. Because her biology was adapted to survive in a sunless environment, the implant in her back was there to regulate her body temperature and keep the heat from hurting her. It had to be recharged every 52 hours or so.

She would, that day, have preferred to be alone in the Infirmary during the recharging process, but she was getting the feeling Storm wouldn't care to leave, and she made it her policy to never ask to be left alone. It would be too tempting to ask often enough for people to get curious, or worse, suspicious.

Even as it was, Storm looked at her with a sort of awe. Of course, Storm looked at many Starfleet officers with a sort of awe.

"There. You're done. Avoid strenuous activity for a few hours, and, oh yes, try not to get into arguments with any more Nausicaans. I'm recharging."

Lazily Storm pulled herself up, shaking her blond hair over and about her shoulders as a reflex action. She was one of those people who without even thinking about it shaped her behavior to make herself as alluring as possible to those attracted to females. There was no denying that she was alluring, with her pale green skin, silken hair, and dark, dark eyes. Good limbs too, as the Dabo girl outfit made very obvious.

Kolana's recharging station had been installed fairly seamlessly into the infirmary's decor when she'd been assigned to the station. With the ease of one who had done it since she was very young, Kolana undid the back of her uniform jacket and undershirt, and slid back until she felt the energy port snatch onto her. She felt a burst of heat in her back, then the first burst of coolness, a very welcome one; she'd overdone it again. She really ought to save the endurance tests for their logical times. How could she have expected to get here without real problems, if Storm hadn't provided an excuse for the transport?

Storm joined her. Kolana knew the girl meant it well. It would make sense to most people that when someone was stuck sitting still in a sickbay for an hour, she'd want company. But she was feeling cross with her at the moment, so when Storm lightly lifted herself onto an adjoining console, which really was not supposed to be sat on, she said to her, "Make sure you don't accidently turn the recharger off there."

She pouted and got back onto the floor. Kolana felt a little sorry for her, but not much. It was probably better for her not to be climbing consoles at the moment anyway.

At any rate, she ought not to let her mood prevent her from making use of this time however possible. So she started casually, "So, do you think Quark will fire you over this? I would think he would, but there was that one incident..." Storm had been on Deep Space 9 for about a month, and she'd worked as a Dabo girl for most of it. The first week she'd been there, she'd broken a Dabo table. That kind of offense should have definitely gotten her fired on the spot, but Quark had only told her harshly he would reconsider her employment there, and then never said or done anything to follow it afterwards. Everyone had wondered why. Kolana had very specific suspicions as to why.

"Oh, I don't know," said Storm, looking down, clearly to try to hide that she did indeed know. Kolana would have staked her life that she knew.

"He ought to," she prodded, trying to provoke a reaction.

She did, but of the wrong kind. "So you think those Nausicaans had a right to treat me that way?" the girl demanded indignantly.

"Of course not, but you know Quark will; he's a Ferengi. Why are you working for him, anyway? Is there really nothing else on this station you could do?" She wondered if there might not be.

But when Storm looked down and quickly said, "I have my reasons," Kolana's instincts told her this wasn't the case here. Yet she doubted she was working at Quark's by choice. This was something she had not thought before, and might make her investigations into this matter...well, more interesting, at any rate.

"Excuse me," a voice from the entrance to the Infirmary made Kolana tense up; she really did hate having to deal with Odo when she was operating in a medical capacity. "Miss Storm?"

"Yes?" Storm jumped off the console, her landing feline-soft.

"About the incident in the bar just now." Odo was holding a padd. "I'd just like to ask you a few questions...is she fit to leave in the Infirmary, Nurse Mincet?"

"Perfectly," Kolana replied.

"Very well. If you will excuse us."

Kolana was very glad to. She waited a few moments after they were gone before picking up the padd she always kept in use of the recharging station, non-suspicious enough, when she was stuck there for an hour at a time. She loaded up its contents and got to work.

**A Shop on the Promenade, The Next Day**

"Can we remove the cloth yet, mama?" As she asked this, Mara's hand was already on the cloth tightly bound around its object.

Ival Lelti's hand gently plucked her daughter's safely away. "Not yet, Mara. We have to wait half an hour more to make sure it's settled." She glanced at the chronometer as she spoke, which confirmed this.

"Why does it take so long?" Mara asked plaintively.

"Because what we do is art," said her mother. "And art requires hard work and patience."

"Sure you shouldn't use a tricorder on it?" called Terisne, Lelti's oldest daughter, from where she was reshelving the store's wares.

"You don't use tricorders on _felise,_" Lelti snapped at her. Four daughters, and the elder two were hopeless cases when it came to learning their parents' craft, and the youngest wasn't showing much promise either, though she was still only six. But eight year old Mara showed some potential, and so Lelti was teaching her how to mold _felise_. "Bajoran glass," aliens called it. Lelti wasn't sure what _glass_ was; something used on Earth, she thought, to make windows, and objects much like the ones she made.

She ran a pretty good business here on Deep Space 9, and combined with the Federation's way of running things she and her daughters lived comfortably. Terisne was considering trying to get into Starfleet, Genin wanted to become a Vedek, Mara might follow in her parents' footsteps, and little Liset could do any number of things, but she and Mara were already having better childhoods than their two sisters had.

All three turned their attention as a figure walked into the store, but when it turned out to be Kolana Mincet Mara lost interest and turned her attention back to the clump of _felise_. Kolana and Lelti had been good friends since about the time Kolana had first arrived on the station a couple of months ago, and Kolana often dropped by the shop right after her duty shift.

Terisne, on the other hand, quickly finished her reshelving and climbed down. "Afternoon, Lieutenant Mincet."

"Good afternoon, Terisne. How are your studies coming along?"

"Very good," said Terisne eagerly; she always wanted to impress Kolana. "I've started working on linguistics now-I've heard that can do you good, help you understand other kinds of people, and my star-charting's really good now."

"That's good, Terisne, very good. And what about you, Lelti? How's business going?"

"About normal. Though I sold one of the bigger _cirs_ this morning."

"Really? Which one?"

Terisne gestured to one of the front shelves. "The one that stood in the middle of there, with the image of the planet imprinted. Bought by a member of Storm's species, actually; he called himself Windblow."

"Did he seem to know Storm?" Kolana asked. "Was he a member of her clan?"

"Actually, he was," said Lelti. "Though he said he'd never met her personally before he came here. It sounded like he hadn't seen her yet either; he asked me a lot of questions about her, what she was like, her job."

"I suppose he didn't have any explanation for how she's avoided being fired?" laughed Kolana.

"No," said Lelti, "but he did say members of his clan had special powers when it came to getting their way, and I swear the man winked at me."

That made Mara giggle, but Terisne shook her head. "Storm can not be doing _that._ Maybe Quark thinks she will, but she's definitely not."

"Then how long can she lead him on?" Lelti wondered. "If I were her, I'd see if my clansmen could help me get another job. I think there's enough loyalty between Nissian clan members for that."

"I hope she talks to him too," said Kolana. Then her attention turned to the covered pile of _felise_ on the workbench, and she saw Mara's gloves. "Well," she said, "what have we here? Is someone learning to mold?"

"We're waiting for it to finish settling," said Lelti. "Then I'm going to have her make a sphere."

"A sphere?" asked Kolana, glancing about the shop. There were some spheres on display, a whole line of them on one shelf, which was the only place they really stood out among all the intricate eye-popping creations that Lelti displayed in the shop's more prominent places.

"That's the first thing you learn how to make," Lelti explained. "It teaches a lot of basic dexterity, and the need for smoothness. My mother-in-law had me make eleven spheres before she let me try anything else. She wanted the interior to be perfectly smooth. If it's even a little wrinkled, the beauty of the sphere is all but lost, and if you don't have it smoothed before you form the sphere, it's really hard to fix."

"But how can you hope to get it smooth enough before it hardens?" asked Mara. "You can't tell before then."

"You learn to tell," Lelti reminded her daughter. "And that's why you have to make so many of them."

Mara looked sadly at the hardening lump. "I want this one to be good," she said.

"Just try your best," her mother told her. "Make it as smooth as you can, and then the next one will be all the better."

"But for the next one," observed Terisne, "you'll have to prepare the _felise_ all over!"

"Terisne!" Lelti snapped. Mara was looking outright gloomy now.

"She merely tells the truth, Lelti," said Kolana with a mischievous grin.

"Are you going to cause me more trouble?"

"Why is she doing it here, anyway?" Terisne asked. "Wouldn't our quarters be a better place?"

"Maybe," said Kolana, "but isn't it good advertising? I know you're not the only craftswoman who likes to do her work out in the open, where it can pique the interest of potential customers. And watching a young girl learn charms people even more. And didn't the Vedeks take interest in her education during that whole business with Akorem Laam?"

"That kind of attention I could have done without," replied Lelti. Mara, like her father had been, was actually of the right _d'jarras_ for artistic pursuits, but Lelti, by birth at least, was not. The Vedeks had publically praised her being trained, than privately had words about her sisters not following in her footsteps and especially about Lelti teaching her, things other people had murmured about as well.

"And yet you're now embarrassing her," said Terisne, "making her work here."

"I'm not embarrassed!" said Mara hotly, which made Kolana laugh.

"She says she's not embarrassed," she said, "So good luck!" She patted Mara's shoulder. "So I'll see you and Storm tomorrow evening, if not before?"

"Yes," said Lelti. "I'll be glad. It's been too long since the three of us were able to sit down together."

"Until then." She waved and walked out. Lelti watched her go, and wondered what it was about Kolana Mincet that made her always suspect there was something her younger friend wasn't telling her.

**That Evening**

She returned to her quarters that night feeling still sore physically and very mentally anxious. Quark had harangued her that morning, telling her that if she ever pulled another stunt like that she would be fired, which had left her momentarily wishing he could afford to mean it. But this was a "safe" job for her; her employer would always be cowed into keeping her employed, and after all she'd been through, she didn't think she could live without that security.

But even worse was the figure she'd spotted on the Promenade this afternoon, the member of her clan who, as she feared, was waiting for her, seated by her window, idly stroking his fingers along her plants. "Hello, Keshlita," he said.

There was little she hated more, little that got to her quicker, than how her clan members all knew her true name, the name that was supposed to be kept sacred, the name that wasn't even entered on legal records, except under careful encryption. It was worse because she didn't know his name. "What do you want?" she asked.

"Your elders just wanted to check on you, Keshlita." Hearing her true name used again was a harder slap. "With good reason, too, I think. Don't you think people will get suspicious about why that Ferengi hasn't fired you?"

"Don't care," she said stubbornly, "so long as he doesn't."

She found herself seized by the throat. "Oh, but Keshlita," said her companion, calm as ever, "don't you care about the reputation of our family. Don't you care how your relatives fare, if they suffer because of your selfishness, Keshlita?"

"NO!" She screamed, and he let go of her throat in surprise. "No!" she yelled again. "I hate you all! I hate who you are and what you do! I hate that you spend your lives lying and stealing and killing people and making people suffer, and I hate how you're probably going to delay people getting off Ness before it breaks apart, and you'll have killed maybe millions of people, sent our race the way of the Vulcans, just to make yourself more money! And I hate how you come here and talk to me and desecrate my true name when you use it like that and bully me and tell me how worthless I am and make me hate myself for giving in to you! No respect for one three times your age! I hope every last one of you and my worthless clanmates are on Ness when it happens, and you all die the way you deserve to!"

She hated him even more when he just stood there, with no change of expression, and watched her cry.

"That won't stop you from doing what I want, will it, Keshlita?" he asked. On hearing her true name yet again, she raised her arm to slap him in her fury, but he grabbed her wrist and wouldn't let go. She didn't respond, didn't give him that satisfaction, but he needed no response from her.

"Three times my age, but still with the behavior of a child. Now, Keshlita," he said, when she stopped crying, because it wasn't doing any good, "I want you to think well and good about what you did today-"

"I have thought about it!" she snapped. "And I would do it all again!"

"I want you to think about ways in which you can draw less attention to yourself. Then I want you to think of all the trouble I had to go to in order to get here this quickly to take care of the problem, though I was actually on my way already. Then, Keshlita, I want you to think about how you would fare if we didn't help you out. In two days, when you've maybe brought yourself to a more reasonable and agreeable frame of mind, we're going to have another talk."

Then he turned and walked out of the room. She waited until he was safely gone before she started crying again, stumbling towards the bathroom. She needed a shower. A strong water shower.

The problem was, she thought, was that much as she screamed how much she hated her clan, she was terrified of the idea of having to survive without their clandestine support. Not that she was afraid of losing it because of this incident. Not, at least, if she did whatever her kinsman told her to do in two days. They probably just wanted information about a customer. That was what they usually wanted. She wouldn't even mind if they didn't all sneer and threaten her. Since the death of her twin nearly twenty years back, she had felt incredibly alone in the universe.

Sometimes Keshlita wondered what would happen when Ness blew itself apart. Current scientists overwhelmingly predicted it would happen within the next century, which was within her lifespan, though maybe she'd so old and decrepit by then she wouldn't care. She didn't think too many of the clan would be killed; like most rich Nissians, almost all of them spent most of their time off-planet these days. But things would be changed, no doubt about it. No longer having a home planet or home population, she was convinced they'd have to weaken.

She'd been dirty all over, and washing the filth off felt good. She wrapped herself in a towel and sat on the counter as she combed out her hair. She began to feel safe again, at least for the time being. She wondered how her clanmate had gotten past her lock. Somehow they always did.

Next was to check her plants, to make sure he hadn't damaged them. She didn't really think he had, but she refused to put anything past him.

When there appeared to be no damage, she order the computer to replicate food and water for them. There were two different types of food to replicate, because the _matsi_ required special nutrients. The matsi was a short, stiff plant with dark stalks and the most brilliant red blooms which Keshlita anointed with an oily substance that would be absorbed into the entire plant. She also had to be careful when giving the _matsi_ water not to give it too much; she only sprinkled a little into the soil.

Easier to take care of were the _pams_ and the _tolsilm_; each required only normal nutrients and water put into the soil. The _pams_ were lavender flowers that grew in bunches and nearly filled their pot. Her twin had always loved _pams_; she'd grown thousands of them when they'd been children, always kept them in her house as an adult, and Keshlita believed that _pams_ grew by her grave on Ness.

The _tolsilm_ sprouted a long green vine, which Keshlita had grown over the table and adjacent bookshelves. If she ever had to move from here, there would be no way to preserve the _tolsilm._ It was her favorite plant.

She replicated herself a simple dinner and ate on the floor, the way almost everyone did back home on Ness. Then she lay down where she had sat, staring up at the ceiling while she tried to figure out if there was anything she could do about her clanmates.

It didn't seem too likely. Most course of actions she could think of would likely result in either the clan's power being destroyed or she herself cast out. She wasn't ready for the former, and even less ready for the latter.

She remembered something Kolana had said to her a couple of days ago, "Family can only hurt each other if there's caring." She herself had some strange up and downs with her own parents, especially after they have moved back to their home planet with the long-running civil war having ceased and the world now trying for Federation membership. Apparently they were sad because Kolana, having been born on Earth, felt no attachment to her species' homeworld.

Kolana wouldn't understand this, she thought. Her parents were just a pair of refugees. And their relatives had probably all been murdered or something.

And yet, somehow, the quote was nagging at her brain. She had the strange feeling that in it lay her answer, what she should do, if she could just spot it.

If the answer was indeed hidden there, though, it remained so; she rose from her contemplation as uncertain as ever.

**Later That Night**

The Nissian was walking through some of the station's less-used corridors, trying to suppress signs of exhaustion. He'd had a busy day. He'd been working through the entire flight here, then he'd had to stare down both his headstrong clanmate and her Ferengi boss, who had both given him more trouble than he'd anticipated. But they hadn't been half the problem that this man could be.

Where was he, though? He should have been here by now. The Nissian hoped he hadn't been stood up. He _hated_ being stood up.

Through several more corridors his temper grew worse, until he stopped and stood at a viewport while he tried to calm down. There was supposed to be a wormhole there somewhere. A stable one, of all things. Not that it was very useful even so, since there was a militaristic empire on the other side. They said those empires provided their own opportunities, but in the Nissian's opinion, they were more trouble than they were worth.

He heard footsteps behind him and turned around, and to his relief found his Orion contact had arrived.

"Hit the stone," the Orion said.

"And the dust falls." It was a variation of an old Nissian expression, and the agreed on code.

"All right," said the Orion. "Have you talked to your clanmate?"

"She will cooperate."

"See to it that she does." He did not seem to be pleased by the short answer from his companion. "My man-human-will be here within nine hours. He will be traveling on a freighter called _Iso Itibun_ under the name of Slate Johnson. He has been told to meet you on Deck 54, Section 23, at 1200 hours; both of you are given a reminder that the station is on 26-hour time in accordance with the rotational period of the nearby planet. He will ask you if you know how many planets are in the nearby system of Theta Secunda, you will answer that you believe there are three."

"And will he have the raindrops with him?"

"He will have one of them with him," said the Orion. "Though need I remind you that the raindrops are the least important part of our work here?"

He knew well, of course, that the objects known in Nissian slang as "raindrops" were what his companion was most concerned about in the entire enterprise. But the Orion was not a being he was allowed to contradict in this matter, so he simply said, "I will be there at the agreed time, then."


	2. The Spies

Kolana woke with her back still latched to the bed and ice waves still traveling down her spine, as well as that familiar presence in her quarters. He hadn't even let her sleep for an hour. How had he known exactly when to come when all his information was supposed to be coming from her?

"Sloan," she sighed at him, "just once, do you think we could hold these meetings when I'm not immobilized?"

"Couldn't you turn the charger off, if you needed to?" He approached her bed, though in the dim light she could see only his outline. If she ordered the computer to raise the lighting it would probably obey her; he didn't *usually* prevent her from doing that. But to do that would be an admission that she was affected by his antics, and that was one admission Kolana had no intention of making. Nor did she turn the charger off, for the same reason.

"To business," he said when she did not respond. "We'll only discuss the immediate difficulty tonight; our other task here can wait until another night. Did you successfully tag this 'Windblow'?"

"With both audio and video," she replied. "You can review the results if you like; the feed downloads into a spool below my coffee table, the authorization code's Mincet zeta Orinoco sigma."

"Have you looked at it yourself yet?"

"It's only three hours old, if that. I set the system up and then went straight to sleep."

No doubt hoping he would find something she should have discovered already, he turned and walked off, going onto tiptoe as he got further from her bed, actually believing he was thwarting her keen hearing instead of only making her aware of his trying to maneuver against her. She was disappointed in him; she had thought him smarter than that. Especially since even if he could have somehow walked in complete silence to the table and possibly gotten the spool off the floor without scraping the tiny part of the floor where she had deliberately removed the carpet, there was the beeping and his voice giving the commands that anyone with half-decent ears would hear, and that was before the recording itself had been turned on and of course made its use clear to her.

As it was, she heard the scrape clearly, and though it was too soft for his human ears she thought a man of his talents should have detected the setup, but he said nothing. The only sounds now were the beeps, him trying to keep her from distinguishing his words-unsuccessfully, of course-and then the scribbly sound of him reviewing everything recorded in accelerated time. She was starting to get very impatient, but she remained silent.

"Nothing so far," Sloan finally was forced to concede. "You know how long he's been on the station?"

"About twenty-six hours, give or take a few minutes. I'm fairly certain he's met with his contact already, but unfortunately I wasn't able to tag him in time for that."

He tsked her lightly, then said, "Did you know there's a member of the Orion Syndicate on the station, arrived about ten hours ago?"

"Would that be Ouvar?" She would have had him confirmed by herself within a few more hours anyway.

"Very good, agent. You're getting better. I assume you'll tag him?"

"As soon as I can manage." He would be harder; Orions always were, even when they weren't constantly on guard, because they knew everyone who saw them on a place like Deep Space 9 would at least suspect they were working for their planet's Syndicate.

"I have a bit of information for him here." She heard a clink as he put it down on the coffee table. "It isn't much, but it's enough to get you started. I'm afraid there's no history between him and Windblow. But you should have another source for Windblow, I believe."

"Yes," she agreed. "I do."

"Do you have her real name yet?"

"Not yet, and I don't think that's exactly my priority here. Yes it would be useful to have, but when it's not even his..." The truth was she didn't want to know it. She knew she was supposed to be the cold, detached agent with no qualms about betraying those she had befriended for the greater good. But she didn't see how all that much greater good could come about from violating her friend's privacy in such a manner.

She was assigned to this station because of one great betrayal already. Surely that was enough.

"If you say so," she heard him respond, in that non-chalalant-but-not-really tone that showed his knowledge and disapproval of her true feelings. At least he wasn't going to make a fuss over it. "You don't think she's a willing collaborator?"

"Depends on your definition of 'willing.' I'm dead certain she doesn't like her relatives at all. But I don't think they're manipulating her without her knowledge, or literally forcing information out of her mouth, or anything like that. I think she's choosing to comply with them out of cowardice."

"Then she can be turned on them."

"Easily. We'd be doing her a favor if I could just convince her." But she had more reserversations about if she could manage that than she wanted to admit to.

"See to it that you do, agent. I don't have to tell you what it might come to if you can't." He gave her a moment to let that sink in, then continued, "As for the third man involved, I would suggest you search for his luggage. I don't think he's arrived here yet, but when he does, he will likely be carrying about half a liter's worth of dilithium gel. It was anonymously purchased on Regulon last week."

"So this involves drugs too?" Dilithium gel, known in Nissian slang as "raindrops," had an extremely powerful psycoactive effect on Nissians, though it did them brain damage as well. They were also extremely expensive; it sounded like Windblow was making his money while he was here.

"That's less our concern than the Syndicate's business is. But they may be made Windblow's concern. If his raindrops are held hostage, he might be willing to sell out."

And probably sell out Storm's life while he was at it. But Kolana knew she couldn't allow that to stop her.

"So that sums it all up at the moment. Get your sleep, agent. You'll probably be up a few nights within the next two weeks."

"Good night," she murmured as he walked out. She'd tried to follow him out the first time he'd done that. Maybe that was why he kept coming while she was stuck to the bed.

She dozed while her implant continued to charge, but when the process finished it and the conduit detached itself from her back and retreated back under the pillowing she pulled herself up, and went to look herself at the feed she had attached to Storm's clanmate. He, however, was asleep.

**The Following Evening**

"No Nausicaan customers today, I hope," Lelti said to Storm as the two of them sat down together in the Replimat.

"No," said Storm. "The only ones on the station are still in that holding cell." She grinned at that, even though Lelti seriously wondered if she wasn't going to drop the charges. Quark might have a strange reluctance to fire her, but drawing that kind of attention could, in his own mind, force his hand. "Where's Kolana?"

"Her shift's only just ending; it'll probably take her a few minutes to get here." She looked over at the Replimat's entrance. "Is that an Orion?"

It was, an extremely tall green bald man, the kind you might expect to see in a cheap holosuite program, complete with the half-shaved head and the bulge on his hip that would have been a knife, except that this was real life so Lelti supposed it was probably something else. He looked a little intimidating, and she was glad there were no empty tables near them.

Even so, Lelti mischieveously started, "Make sure you don't get anything started with him, Storm. Not the sort of person you want to so much as bump into."

Which was when, right in front their eyes, a hulking creature of species she didn't recognize who'd been running into the place for some reason collided into him. That would have been bad enough, but then, as they watched, both of them were thrown forward by the inertia, crashing into two young Bajoran woman and a Starfleet man who had just been getting out of his chair, sending five bodies sprawling to the floor.

The Orion was the first up, and he grabbed the individual responsible and shook him, yelling something incomprehensible, thought presumably along the lines of his needing to watch where he was going. The Bajoran girls lay in a daze. The Starfleet officer scrambled to his feet and showed that organization's courage by daring to place a hand on the Orion. "Calm down," he urged. "It was just an accident."

This resulted in another spate of yelling, during which Kolana abruptly appeared, and had both hands on him, which made Lelti relax; the two officers combined could probably subdue him if need be. "You're not injured, I don't think," said Kolana, though she pulled out her tricorder to make sure. A moment later she turned her attention to the two Bajorans, who were now also getting back on their feet. "Not so good for you, m'am," she said to one of them, a blonde kid in a silly-looking scarlet jumpsuit. "Do you want to go to the Infirmary?"

"No, I'm fine," she snapped, and was clearly trying to get away, though now there were onlookers as well as tables in her way.

"Are you sure?" Kolana asked, good, dutiful nurse that she was.

"She's fine," repeated the other Bajoran. Meanwhile, the other officer had somehow calmed the Orion down, while the runner responsible for all this had understandably made himself scarce. With the situation winding down, Kolana was able to desert it and join her two older friends at their table. As she came over, in accordance with their long-standing arrangement, she, as the last one to arrive, stopped at the replicator for the favorite dishes of all three: noodles with katterpod sauce for Lelti, boiled Andor longfish spine for Storm, and her homeworld's own famous soup for herself. She was quite a sight, tottering over with them while trying not to spill anything.

Storm, who knew something about carrying multiple dishes at once, kindly stood up and took Lelti's noodles and her own spine from her as she got close enough. "Take a load off," she said. "You've had busy enough a day as it is, haven't you?" The word had been that there'd been an outbreak of some sort of disease on at least one of the ships that had arrived that day.

"Not really," said Kolana, sitting down and taking the first slow sip of her soup while the other two dug in. "There was some concern when a group of ill Draylaxians arrived, but they turned out to have Ton's Fever, which doesn't spread to other species. I was pretty impressed, though, how quickly Dr. Bashir recognized it; it's an extremely obscure disease. I admit, my first thought was that it was Rigellian Fever, and then it would have been a busy day, and possibly an ugly one. Speaking of which, Lelti, I think we should get Liset's boosters done within the next couple of days. I can do them at 1000 tomorrow if that's all right with you. Terisne can accompany her to the Infirmary now; she's old enough."

"Yeah, that should work," said Lelti. "Hopefully she won't give you as much trouble as Mara did!"

"Just remember," Storm told her, "if Mara is to be a true artist, to see her with a temper is only an encouraging sign."

"All the same," laughed Lelti, "it would be easier if that temper wasn't a requirement of the profession." She thought of her late husband, then, of some of the horror stories her mother-in-law had told her of his earliest years, though noone had remained a child under the Occupation long, and as for what he had eventually become...well, that had certainly been the product of a stubborn mind and temper as well.

"Did you sell any of her spheres, though? I thought I saw someone in Quark's this morning with one of them."

"No, she still hasn't made any fit for selling; I sold one of my own. You'd be surprised just how well those things sell; I'd keep on making them even if it wasn't good for keeping the hands in shape."

"I hope you haven't told Mara she'll spend her entire life making them," commented Kolana with a wry smile. "That could turn her off the whole career track."

"Make sure you don't tell her either, then."

"Don't worry." Her grin turned practically wolfish. "Noone is better at keeping secrets than me."

The problem, was, though, she wasn't; there was someone who was probably better than both of them at it sitting with them. Which might have been why Storm hastily changed the subject. "Did you hear the latest news from Earth? Some big religious leader there is receiving final rites. His name was John something I think."

"Humans still have religion?" asked Kolana, surprised. "Dr. Bashir swore to me they don't anymore!"

"Some of them do," said Lelti. "A few months ago, when I came back here after the first Dominion scare died down, I actually shared quarters with a Catholic family of nine children. Apparently Catholicism doesn't exactly encourage birth control." She suppressed a shudder at the thought; living under the Occupation had been bad enough in that capacity.

"Wow," said Storm, "that sounds like a story."

"Oh the tales I could tell you...but anyway, she told me most originally human religions now have more non-human adherents than human adherents. There are a couple of exceptions, religions that don't generally recruit and such, but I wrote my condolences to her back when this Pope, John XXVI, first started ailing, and she told me his successor's not likely to be human."

"Oh him," said Kolana. "I've heard of him. I think he's almost as old as you are, Storm."

Funny, Lelti couldn't remember Storm's age, though if Kolana was making a remark like that, presumably she'd told them it at some point. The Nissian, meanwhile, laughed and said, "There are not many humans that old, are there?"

"Nor Bajorans, nor Daled," said Lelti. "When we are all dead and gone, Storm, you must meet with our children and grandchildren and tell them about us." If Kolana ever had any children; Lelti honestly had no idea what her plans there were.

"I know," said Storm softly, staring down at her half-eaten spine. She absently chewed on another forkful of the fish meat before saying, "but who knows. Kolana, didn't you say some of your species can last a couple of centuries, and that furthermore, your most fertile years are when you're in your seventies?"

"The first's not a common thing, but yes, in nature we would have children after we've learned the land, live just long enough to raise them, and then die so as not to take up their resources. Which gives me time to decide whether to have them. Though finding another Daled with which to have them...you have no idea Lelti; you've always had crowds of members of your own species around you."

"Maybe too many, I sometimes think," smiled Lelti. "But what about with other males? Can you do that? Would you need help? Could the kids then have kids?"

"Well, when we mate with the people on the other side of the planet, it produces allasomorphs, who I think actually are infertile, but don't quote me on that. With off-planet species I'm not sure there are even any documented cases; I've never heard of any. We've been very isolated."

"Then maybe you'll end up doing new research," said Lelti. "Try a human guy; they can fertilize anything. For my own species, I can say a Bajoran man's a good bet too. Also, if you want a husband in the process, he'll probably be a better one than a human."

"Says a Bajoran woman," Storm felt the need to point out. Lelti couldn't protest that, but she still thought she was right.

"I really don't know," said Kolana. She leaned back in her chair, empty soup spoon pressing down momentarily on the table. "I'm starting to think it's a pretty big assumption I'll even live that long." She almost sighed this, which made a shocked Lelti realize she honestly meant it.

"What makes you think that?" she asked anxiously.

"Lots of things," she shrugged. "I'm a Starfleet officer, after all, and there's a war coming up, make no mistake. It may not come tomorrow, it may not even come next year, but it will come. And don't forget the only thing that keeps my from dropping dead right here of heat stroke is this." She tapped her back, above where she wore her climate implant. "Most of the time I'm highly vulnerable to it malfunctioning. Scary if you think about it, eh?"

"Yeah," Storm agreed. "Pretty scary." She was finishing up her spine. "Well, I have to go over to Odo's office and tell him I'm not pressing charges against the Nausicaans, unfortunately. Though who knows, maybe he can find something on which to hold them longer anyway."

Lelti wished she could say she was surprised. "Surely you can make them languish a few minutes more," she said. "Eat the rest of your fish very slowly."

"Good idea." She was down to the last bite, which she put in her mouth before closing her eyes. The little sounds of pleasure she made were a touch embarrassing, but it was all for a noble cause. Lelti herself used it as excuse to lick the katterpod sauce off her fingers, which was undignified too, but it did taste good.

**A Very Short While Later**

"Though I assume you would not mind if I did not walk over there just this minute," Odo was positively drawling to her, "if maybe I took my time with the paperwork until you were well out of sight?"

Filled with gratitude for his understanding, she nodded. "But I walk quick," she added.

"Good. Good night."

"Good night," she sighed, and started on her swiftest stride. Within five minutes she was safely in the turbolift.

Unfortunately, the person she really didn't want to deal with wasn't any of the Nausicaans she'd left behind. It was the clanmate waiting for her in her quarters.

She tried not to think of him, tried to run her mind back to the good food and good conversation of the Replimat. Her greatest source of happiness in the universe right now were her two friends. Though sometimes she feared she might be putting them in danger, especially Lelti and her young daughters; Kolana, at least, could probably take care of herself.

It was with this final thought that she reluctantly let herself in, and told herself to just tell him what he wanted to know and get him to go away as quickly as possible.

"Well, Keshlita?" He didn't even wait until the door closed, which made her boil inside; what if someone had been passing by and had heard him? "Have you thought about it?"

"What do you want?" she demanded. _Please,_ she thought. _Get out of here before I lose it and try to strike you._

He heaved a huge sigh. "I came here," he said, as if to himself but she knew better, "only because I needed to know how often a certain human, one named Simon Maltin, comes to Quark's, and what holosuite programs he uses. Also how often he meets with any Andorians."

Ignore the theatricals, she told herself firmly. "I think he comes in about every other afternoon," she said. "Not exactly like a computer; occasionally he shows up three or four days after his last visit instead of two, but that's his basic schedule. For the holosuite programs I'd have to check, though I think he's fond of lumph-racing simulations. And I've seen him meet with Andorians a couple of times, though of course I'm not going to see that every time, he could also be meeting with Andorians when it's not my shift, or when I was on the other side of the bar, or working at the Dabo tables. I've never seen him play Dabo, if you think that's important."

Unfortunately, he didn't thank her and leave, as she'd held out hope for, or even make more condescending remarks and then leave, as she'd more realistically expected. Instead he turned around and strolled towards her plants. She hurried after him, ordering their food and water from the replicator as she went, just so she would have an excuse to get between him and then.

He stood there and let her give all three plants their water, but as she was giving the _matsi_ its oil, he continued, "Did you know he had a half-Bajoran uncle?"

"No," she said in surprise. She was also a little intrigued; despite Lelti's remarks to her earlier that day, intermarriage between Bajorans and other species had only really started to become common during the last decade or so, and, sadly, most individuals who were half-Bajoran had Cardassian fathers.

"Am I right in believing you've befriended a certain Ival Lelti?"

"Yes..." said Storm warily, not really knowing where this was going, but not liking the various possibilities.

"Do you know who her husband was?"

"Only that his name was Ival Toro, that he was in the Resistance, and that the Cardassians killed him," she shrugged. She was now feeding the other two plants, and tried to appear indifferent, and not ask if Maltin's uncle had known Lelti's husband.

She didn't have to anyway, because he promptly told her he had, and had smuggled weapons to him. "Your friend might even have met him a few times before her husband was killed."

She remained silent, hoping he wouldn't ask. To her surprise he didn't directly. Instead he just said, "I wonder if she would recognize his name. Maltin's, I mean. The uncle was related to him on his mother's side, so it's not the same family name."

Then she wanted very badly to ask the uncle's name, especially because that he didn't have any reason to tell her. But she had some lingering pride, and it kept her from doing so.

Instead he asked, "What can you tell me about Ival Lelti?"

She shrugged. "She's the owner of a stall on the Promenade, she had four daughters by her late husband, aged fourteen, twelve, eight, and six, and no surviving relatives of her own, or at least none she's ever mentioned to me; it sounds like you know more about his relatives than I do."

"She's very fond of holosuite simulations when she has the time for them, isn't she?"

Of course he'd look that up. "Her preference of programs cannot possibly be relevant to any purpose you might have. Take my word on that." Many of her scruples had dried up by necessity over the years, but she really would greatly prefer to keep confidentiality on that detail; if only because in Lelti's case there was great potential for pointless embarrassment.

She feared, though, that her cheeks were blushing duranium grey to give it away. When she heard his nasty chuckle, she knew he had guessed. But with what little decency he had in him, he passed over it, asking instead, "Anything else she's done? When was the last time she left the station?"

"Long before I came here, I think. She doesn't travel much. I don't think she's ever been outside the system, either. Whether her husband ever did, of course, I can't know; she doesn't talk about him much. I think the last time was probably when the Dominion threat started and almost everyone with children or some other reason left for places they imagined safer, and she went back down to Bajor, but I don't think she stayed away half a year. Her children are happiest here, and maybe she likes it best here too."

"Not a very remarkable woman, then," he commented, and she felt the relief flood her; in all likelihood, that meant he wouldn't have any further interest in her. At least once he'd asked his last question: "And you've seen no contact between her and Maltin?"

"None," she said. "At the very least, she's never met him in Quark's, and if he ever even came into her store, I haven't heard about it." Though she found herself thinking if he'd known about the connection, he might have just gone there once, just to have a look. That was painful, because it would still mean nothing, while still getting Lelti attention she really didn't need if her relation and his cronies found out about it.

"Very well." He was satisfied. She determinedly looked out the window at the stars so he couldn't see how intense her relief was. Ness' sun was supposed to be in that direction, though it was just a little too far away to be visible. "I will probably be here for a couple of weeks. See to it that when I come into Quark's, I am served quickly."

Left alone, she showered again, though she didn't quite feel the need for it she had after their last meeting. But as she stepped out of the shower she nearly bolted back in, for she thought she heard something pulling on the carpet.

Then a moment later she realized it wasn't sentients who did that. This did mean she ought to call the station's pest control, but she never did. She didn't mind voles.

In fact, when she saw the little creature struggling, having apparently caught its claw on a thread, she even went so far as to bend down and try to help it out. Naturally at being touched by a big two-legged creature like those that usually killed voles when they saw him, it panicked and started to thrash. On some instinct, she stroked it under the chin, which calmed it down a little, and her finger happened to brush between its eyes.

Then suddenly, from out of its brain through her arm-she could actually feel it passing through her system into her own brain-she was assaulted with the vole's absolute terror, then by the soothing instinct her stroking had invoked, then more terror the gesture hadn't gotten rid of. It was so primitively brutal she recoiled, dropping the vole in the process. It scurried away as fast as its legs would carry it and was out of sight before she recovered.

Slowly, her shock gave was to wonder, and she pressed her hands to her head as if that would confirm or deny what she had just felt-not that this did anything, since almost every sentient in the universe could experience their own thoughts and emotions without telepathic help.

She'd always known about this ability, of course, and had even been looking forward to its development. But she hadn't been expecting the first signs of it for twenty more years at the very least. It wasn't completely unknown for Nissians to get it before they'd lived two centuries, but in every case she knew about, their twin had still been alive, and hers had been dead for over a decade.

If she developed this quickly enough, she thought, it might be enough to change everything. None of her relations had it; the members of her family didn't tend to live that long. And once they found out they'd keep from physical contact with her, but they had no reason to do so right now. She just had to wait for it to develop further-it could be a lot of time in between reading animal feelings and reading sentient thoughts. And then she had to figure out just what to do with it.


	3. The Figures from the Past

Sometimes it disturbed Kolana how much Terisne hero-worshipped her. The girl didn't even have any interest in medicine.

She couldn't help think about it that morning, as she paced about the currently empty Infirmary, Dr. Bashir busy in the back, waiting for her to arrive with her sister. It wasn't in disinterest that she'd set this up, to get the two of them alone away from their mother. They ought to be willing to answer any questions she asked and tell her anything about their late father that they knew, things their mother wasn't willing to talk about because they might be too painful. Or too dangerous to admit to anyone.

When she looked out the entrance, it was a busy morning on the Promenade. There was a thick knot of Bajoran women in front of the herbs booth. An extremely tall human man in a Starfleet uniform was strolling alongside a very short Arbi, looking like he was giving him a tour of the place. A little further away, she could see Elim Garak greeting a customer. Him she always kept at least half an eye on, though she knew it was only a matter of time before he noticed. In fact, she wasn't sure he hadn't noticed already and just chosen not to let her know that.

Kolana did feel a little annoyed when she spotted the girls in the distance, and saw Liset was making things difficult. In fact, she heard them scarcely a second later, even though they weren't exactly outside the door and there was a loud argument going on between a pair of stall owners, Liset yelling and yelling through tears as her sister had to drag her by both arms, still trying to talk some sense into her, then giving that up in favor of glancing around apologetically. She wondered if it would really be a violation of medical ethics to sedate a Bajoran juvenile her age.

She wouldn't, of course; she was always very rigid about ethics on those occasions she was actually allowed to be. Instead when they finally got through the crowd she came out of the Infirmary, tried not to see Terisne looking at her like she was the supreme leader of the Prophets or something, and bent her knees until she wasn't that much taller than Liset, and said gently, "Hello. Are we unhappy today?"

She'd been worried Liset's knowing she was a nurse would cause the girl to get worse, but she was lucky; Liset knew and trusted her enough to at least stop wailing. "Don't want to get shot," she was sure to tell her, though.

"And why is that?" Kolana asked her gently. "It doesn't hurt."

"Last time it burnt," Liset insisted.

That did happen sometimes with Bajoran children with sensitive skin. Liset had needed to be inoculated against a certain Bajoran skin virus, and the vaccine was known to cause an occasional mild burning sensation. Kolana hadn't known it had for Liset; she believed Dr. Bashir had been the one to administer that vaccine. Still, she was nothing if not able to adapt on the fly: "If it burns this time, you can bite your sister's thumb, right Terisne?"

"Sure," said Terisne, who was happy to do anything to get her sister to cooperate. "But I'm sure it won't burn twice. You won't be that unlucky."

This was not very reassuring to Liset; they got her to walk into the Infirmary and sit down on one of the beds, but she looked like she might still get up and run away. It was almost enough to make Kolana wish she'd prepared the drugs beforehand like she usually did, so as to give her no more time to fret. But she needed that precious handful of minutes to get her information.

And there she could even use the kid's behavior to her advantage: "Come now, Liset," she said. "You shouldn't be scared of this. Your mother says you were in her womb when the Cardassians killed your father and you, she, and your older sisters all had to hide in the mountains. This shouldn't frighten you so much after that, right?"

"I don't really remember all that," said Liset. That made sense, of course, since she'd barely been born when the Occupation had ended. Kolana had heard Lelti speak with awed gratitude about two of her children growing up free of fear and misery.

But Terisne did, and Kolana said next, "I'm sure your sister can tell you all about it, though, right, Terisne?" The other girl gave a very short nod; she didn't want to, though. That was unfortunate, but nothing Kolana couldn't work around. "You all went through hell, didn't you?" she said, as gently as she could.

"That doesn't even begin to describe it." She was barely speaking at all; from the confused way Liset bent her head, it seemed she couldn't even hear her, though of course Kolana could.

But she had to push on. "Where did you go, exactly? The Dakhur Hills?"

"No," said Terisne. "We weren't in that province. We were in the Olto Ridges, near Tamulna. Our father was actually murdered in the town, I think."

"You think?" said Kolana cautiously; she should've expected the girls might not have the information she needed.

"Yeah," said Terisne. "Mom said the Cardassians caught him with some Orion criminal or something."

"The Cardies had to be making that up," said Liset. "There weren't any Orions on Bajor."

"I don't know," said Terisne. "She didn't sound like she believed they were lying. I never saw any Orions, but I didn't see most of what dad did. Maybe she saw one. Remember that argument they had when that guy with the huge scar showed up for five days in a row? Where she said to him it was no good to sell the planet out to another race, even if they then got rid of the Cardassians, and he insisted it was only a small gift and worth it. In fact, come to think of it, I remember, too, she later said something about a 'repulsive race' to him only a couple of weeks before he was killed."

Kolana spared a glance at her tricorder as it tracked the drugs' progress; it was close to three-quarters complete. If there was any more information to get out of the girls, she needed to guide it out of them with her next words. She measured the worth of "the guy with the huge scar" against that of probable Orion contact, and decided there former was more likely to be dead and there might always be time to probe that module later. "Is that all she ever said about his meeting with aliens?" she asked. "Did you ever see any? Or do you think they all met with somebody else? Maybe the Orions all did, who knows?" She managed a playful tone in those last two questions which made Liset giggle.

But Terisne was looking a little disturbed, as she said, "Actually, he wasn't the only guy around who might have been meeting with Orions. There was that boy Schul Rotto too. He was always going around, showing up with all the news that was happening not only elsewhere on Bajor, but on all the other planets too. I remember it was him who brought us the news about how the Federation was nearly destroyed by the Borg; we'd never heard of such a thing. I wonder what happened to him."

"He's up here," said Liset. "I've seen him. I saw him fixing chairs in the Replimat last week."

That was definitely enough information to go on, which was good, because Kolana had been needing to stall on the drugs. "Your shot is ready," she said. "Ready to let her bite your thumb, Terisne?"

Liset had momentarily forgotten about the shot, it seemed; she'd been grinning but that vanished in an instant, and Terisne put an arm around her to keep her from jumping up and running away. "It won't hurt, Liset," she said. "I promise it won't hurt."

A brief, dark thought flitted across Kolana's heart; she was too aware that Terisne couldn't really make that promise, that she had no real power here. But she hated thinking like that when she played this role in her life, and she forced the thought away, cheerful smile still on her face, and said, "It'll be over in a moment." Even as she spoke, she slipped the hypospray up to Liset's neck and pressed in.

It didn't hurt, thankfully; a couple of seconds and no real reaction for Liset made Kolana pretty sure of that.

**Quark's, That Afternoon**

It had been so far a fairly busy day for Storm, but thankfully one free of relatives, Orions, or really anything more unpleasant than Ferengi. By the time she was working what was probably her hundredth Dabo table of the day, she was having to concentrate through fatigue. But even that was another relief, because it meant she'd have no trouble falling asleep at the end of the day. Twenty more minutes, she told herself, and she'd be able to beep out.

There were currently three males and two females at the Dabo table: a human couple, a Bajoran, a Brikar, and the second female was a species Storm couldn't recall offhand. The Brikar, whose name she thought was Tedi, had been winning most the day, until the other four were all looking suspicious. She was trying to ignore it. It wasn't like she cared if customers thought the tables were rigged, or even if they actually were. All she knew was she had nothing to do with that, at least. Except when she did, but she hadn't had to do anything today so far.

Though it was maybe a little bit of a reason to be concerned with the human female, whose name might have been Lorette, hissed to the Brikar, "You better be careful you don't get the two of us too frustrated. I think we might know a friend of yours." It wasn't exactly a threat, but if the Brikar construed it as one, there was always a chance he might try to hold the bar liable later. She put about as much legitimacy in that prospective argument as her boss would, but the law might see the matter differently, so she said immediately, "That's no way to talk during a friendly game of Dabo. If you want a new partner, we can arrange a swap."

"You should not," hissed Tedi. "I should not be deprived of an opportunity to win fair and square against these fools."

"Not playing this game," the Bajoran promptly announced, and took his tiny pile of winnings and left. The second female, whose name Storm thought was Tsill, looked after him as if she might like to follow, but made no move to leave.

Not wanting the players to all flee, Storm hastily said, "If no one else wants a swap I'll set the table going?"

When the second female said nothing, the Brikar glared after the man then turned his head back in a huff, and Lorette just shrugged, Storm started the table. But even as the familiar beeping and faint whir dispelled her free-floating anxiety, something far, far worse for her mood happened. One of her relatives walked in.

Not even the one she'd seen already. That would have been unpleasant, but at least would not have meant she had another one of them on the station to deal with. And not even only just another one either. This was her Aunt.

Surely, she thought as she tried to concentrate on the spinning table, she should be dead already. At her age, with her twin dead nearly a decade. The two of them had both lived far too long and made everyone they knew far too miserable, Storm and her own twin especially.

_Tarsiti._ She actually mouthed the syllables, which here in public ought to be absolutely unforgivable, especially in a crowded place like this where anyone might be able to read it off her lips. But that was the one thing she had against her Aunt, that at least she knew her true name. Although was extreme indeed to say that someone didn't deserve to have her true name protected, although only the worst creatures in the universe shouldn't get that privilege, that lady qualified.

She regretted it a moment later, though, when she felt the touch of her Aunt to her mind-and that ought to have been exciting, that she had developed enough to sense when others were reading it, but now wasn't-and she was furious. Storm did her best to project her own fury back, switching her hands to autopilot as she continued to work the table, not even paying much attention to the results when it stopped spinning, let her hate swarm out and barrage her Aunt, who of course was probably immune from its lash.

"Of course," Lorette no doubt thought she sounded like the very epitome of scorn, but Storm was not impressed. That naïve creature had no idea what true anger was; she'd never experience anything in her life worthy of it; of that Storm was sure. "One more game, and that's it. I won't lose any more latinum in this place than that."

It really was very foolish for her to say that out loud, thought Storm. Now she had to make sure the woman more or less lost.

Rigging the Dabo table took concentration, though idly Storm thought it might be a lot easier if she was a telepath. She had to get her hand into the right places without betraying any sign of doing anything differently than she usually did, though it helped that all of the human female's suspicions were directed at a fellow player, and she seemed the type that didn't pay too much attention to the Dabo girl, unless she was yelling at her. Some of the other girls would subtly recruit one of the other players to help, but Storm wasn't that daring. Instead she forced herself to forget about her Aunt right there and do the needed work. She had run into too many beings like Lorette to even feel guilty, really. She thought she sensed her Aunt moving away, deciding apparently to eat somewhere else, but she couldn't track her. She probably couldn't have anyway.

Lorette's face as she stared at the results of that final spin was nothing but funny. It didn't even feel like much of a threat when she waved her finger in the face of Tedi and said, "I'll have you arrested for fraud one of these days, I promise you! You'll regret the day you ever heard my name!" It was especially amusing when Tsill had done better that turn than Tedi had.

But the diversion could only keep her mind off her Aunt for so long. Tsill left shortly after with a small amount of winnings, and as other players came in Tedi too walked off with his heap of latinum, and the next group were pretty dull, though at least they meant no more drama until her shift was finally over. She supposed her Aunt might be waiting for her back in her quarters, so on impulse she decided to eat in the Replimat. She even considered paging Lelti or Kolana to invite them to join her, but then she decided they weren't quite the company she was looking for that night.

Instead she entered the Replimat carefully releasing a small amount of pheromones, the kind that among her own species would've let the males know she was interested, and she knew could draw males of some other species as well. Unfortunately it didn't work on humans, but it did work on Bajorans, and she only had to let them out for half a minute before a young Bajoran with weird scars on his cheeks, and even weirder dark hair, but good muscles, walked up and offered to get her her food. "I just got off shift," he told her, "and I would recommend the _temeeris_; a Ruji delicacy newly programmed into our replicators."

He got it for them both, bringingt it to the table she had sat at after making sure there weren't any Orions or Nausicaans anywhere in the immediate area. He was holding the two dishes above the head, giving her a chance to appreciate the sight of his strong biceps, though one of the shoulders had another vicious-looking scar on it; a memento of the Occupation, or of something else? She didn't think it would be a good idea to ask.

"So," he said as he set them down, "what's a pretty green girl like you doing on this particular hunk of duranium?"

"Working as a Dabo girl," replied Storm. That was always her answer when people asked her that kind of question. She'd said it to both Lelti and Kolana enough that they'd finally stopped asking further.

She thought the boy might have caught the warning in her voice, too, because he readily said, "And I'm working as a mechanic here in the Replimat. Call me Rotto."

"Call me Storm. Thankfully he asked no questions about her having such a name, even though a lot of Bajorans did. Instead they got into a pretty interesting conversation about Cardassian and Federation technology, as his job often caused him to run into very unorthodox uses of both. Quark's, though it used a lot of Cardassian hardware, didn't use much Federation design. She also learned that he had been up on Deep Space 9 on and off since about the time it had become Deep Space 9, and that he wasn't a mechanical expert by training, though he had since become one. During his first year on the station had mostly been employed instead repairing broken pieces of furniture, of which there had been a number at the time.

Still, she wasn't entirely happy with all the questions he asked her about her own life. She ought not to resent it, she knew, since fair was fair. Except it wasn't fair; because Rotto probably had nothing to concea. It seemed had it seemed lived a life without any shadiness in it at all. Hadn't had time for it, really. She didn't ask for his exact age but she thought it was probably around twenty-five years standard. If he had even been involved in the Resistance he gave no indication of it.

They both knew where it was all leading, of course, though he did look surprised when Storm was so quick to invite him back to her own quarters. But she didn't want to go to strange quarters tonight, even if it shouldn't make any difference, and might even be a better idea with her Aunt lurking about. He didn't know that of course, and readily agreed.

They ended up kissing in the turbolift, pinning each other against the walls, her pulling those arms in and nearly moaning when they curled around her back. He was a much better kisser than she had anticipated, skillfully teasing her mouth and even figuring out really quickly that she liked pressure on her cheeks-most non-Nissians took ages on that. It made her think she'd gotten really lucky that night indeed.

Storm's quarters were empty when they arrived, but suddenly she felt something creep up her spine, a weird feeling about her bedroom, as if it might not be a good idea to go in there. Yet it was too vague a feeling to care about when Rotto managed to find that place on her stomach that always made her squirm, and then he put his mouth there, which even through her clothes was almost too much, and then he dipped lower and bit at her thighs, and she was completely gone. Her knees gave way and they nearly collided into her plants as he pushed her up against the bulkhead, moving up to kiss her again, which just made her hotter and more wanting down below.

"Couch?" he whispered, and she was quick to agree. The couch was one of the few pieces of furniture that had traveled around with her through the years; she'd originally gotten it on Risa when she and her twin had been there for a week for some family business they'd never entirely understood. A pale violet in color now, it was made of some sort of bone, and had a flexible structure that allowed it to be folded up, spread far out, or molded into something in between, as it was now with its back set upwards to full height.

For a moment she thought of the secret compartment attached to the bottom of the seat, the one even her family didn't know about. But the couch was currently unfolded enough she didn't need to adjust its position. Rotto just laid her out on it and went to town. His mouth stayed on her stomach as he found the clasp that sent her gauzy outfit tumbling outward and left most of her lower body bare, and then his hands went further down and _oh_, he did know how to touch a Nissian female. Storm felt her toes shake; she was soaked through even before his fingers really got in, and she opened right up, even though she wasn't in her heat. Without which there was no danger of pregnancy, of course, and she managed to tell Rotto that, though it took her longer than it usually would have; it seemed she could barely gasp out one word at a time. He grinned and said, "Convenient." How was he still sounding so together, when she was breaking up into atoms?

He even managed to get her fully open before so much as taking his pants off, and when non-Nissians almost never managed tha. She'd been so used to hurting a least a little that when it didn't, she almost felt shocked. He grinned at her as if he knew, and give her a kiss so gentle and sweet for one crazy, paranoid moment she wondered if just maybe he was mocking her. Then he thrust, and the angle was _just perfect_, and she didn't think of anything at all.

Bajoran men, in Storm's admittedly limited experience, were somewhere above humans but somewhere below Orions in stamina. She doubted he would last long enough for her to come from it; no non-Nissian yet had. But this was its own kind of paradise, especially with one of his hands back on her stomach and his fingers stroking just right again, and then when he leaned down he even breathed lightly over her breasts, and her head knocked against the couch and she tried to keeping breathing even as she shook. As her body squeezed that was the end of him. He groaned deep and rough, and the heat of his come inside her sent her rising, her body too hot and wanting, and for a moment she thought she might go crazy.

But he was quick, pulling out and diving down to put his hands back to work, and soon she was starting to tingle. He didn't get impatient, just worked her up and up, faster as she started to whimper, and then he got hard again just as she was getting close, and there was a moment of discomfort as he climbed back on her, but that just made her last a little longer even as he thrust back in, and fucked her hard, not stopping even as she came, everything tightening and letting go and she nearly shrieked with the force of it, stronger even than most of the orgasms she had while in heat.

By the time he came again, Storm was finally coming down, ecstasy giving way to more limp euphoria. It was also starting to creep into the back of her head that there was something odd going on, that some instinct of hers seemed sure of that. But figuring it out required much more energy than her brain had at the moment. She was pretty sure she'd come hard enough to drain her system, and she thought she might fall asleep right there.

Her eyes closed as she felt Rotto's hands on her again, maneuvering her, and she was so tired she just let him do so, aware she was being pushed into a sitting up position before sleep took her.

She woke up in that position, now alone, but when she asked the computer for the time and was told it was nearly 0800 that couldn't surprise her; boys like him always worked long hours. She herself had to be at the bar by 1000, so she hurried to shower.

It was only when she had dressed for the day and was tending to her plants that she thought maybe she should look under the couch just to make sure the compartment had been undisturbed. It was a ridiculous worry; no one knew about that thing, and Rotto had seemed to be just an ordinary Bajoran boy. Well, except that when she thought about it, it had been kind of incredible just how much he'd known about how to please a Nissian female, when he may very well have never even seen one before in his life.

At first glance, when she pulled the container out from the back and opened it, it didn't look like anything was amiss. The jewels were certainly all still there; he hadn't been a thief. Nor had any of the data chips been taken; a quick count confirmed they were all there. The little holo of her twin hadn't been taken either, but she doubted anyone would've been interested in that anyway.

Except...maybe it was her memories playing tricks on her but she could've sworn she'd left the holo on the other side of the jewels. And had she really straightened the chips out that much?

So he hadn't been a thief, but it was not impossible he had been a spy. Told what to do to take her out of commission for a few hours, which she supposed any Nissian, or at least any Nissian female, could have told him. But who in the universe could have told him about the compartment? Unless he'd spent a while looking for it, which maybe he'd done.

Or maybe she was just being paranoid about the whole thing.

And even if she wasn't, she decided stubbornly, she wasn't sorry. Her family would bully and trouble her anyway; she might as well get some fun out of it.

Still, she concluded, it was a pity her telepathic ability was only beginning to develop. If he had indeed done what she suspected, he never would've gotten away with it had she even been able to skim the top of his mind. She wondered if there was a genuine way to speed it up, though she knew most of the tales she'd heard about doing that were false. Maybe Kolana would know. Storm decided to ask her.

Not in front of Lelti, though. Not that she didn't trust either of her two friends, but if this story came out in the process, and it might because she knew she had a tendency to babble, it would be embarrassing enough to tell it to only one person. Make it a matter of medical confidence, she decided, before she went to comm the nurse.

**That Evening**

By the time Kolana finally sat down in her quarters to wait for Storm's arrival, she was far too tired, and she hadn't even gotten a chance to review her recorded footage yet.

Storm had managed to wake her up by contacting her, speaking the name of the boy whom she'd had no reason to think important. So Kolana had spent too much time exhaustively researching him as well as Nissian telepathy before running off to her morning shift. It had been a busy one, with a large accident on Level Five keep her and Dr. Bashir busy for much of it, delaying a number of appointments people had made which had mostly been crammed into the afternoon. Those had probably taken longer because the patients were all grumpy and wanting to make complaints and be less cooperative.

Then when she'd gotten off-shift, coming out of the Infirmary she'd noticed two Nissians she didn't recognize on the Promenade. She'd wasted over an hour following them, before she'd managed to identify them, and discovered they were passengers on a transport that wasn't supposed to have even stopped on Deep Space 9, but had docked there six hours to emergency repairs. Nonetheless, she'd felt the need to tag them, just to make sure they left with their transport, which had been too difficult a task. She'd barely had time after that to grab a bite to eat from an overcrowded Replimat before hurrying back for this meeting.

She ended up spending most of the ten minutes she had to refresh herself mentally working away from her mindset. Kolana had the general feeling that she didn't have to and therefore shouldn't worry about the implications of Storm's run-in with Rotto during this conversation, but act purely as a medical woman and entirely in her patient's best interests. Though if she failed to learn something important because of that, Sloan might kill her.

So when Storm came in, and thanked Kolana for agreeing to see her, she could be very genuine in her smile. "I've done some research today, and talked to Dr. Bashir about it," she started, "and he said he might know an expert. We really didn't have time to do much today, I'm afraid, but he's going to try to get in touch with him. But one thing I did read is it's not as uncommon for the first signs of telepathy to manifest at your age as most people think, though it is much more likely for those living in close proximity with their twin-though hardly unknown for those who aren't or even those whose twin is dead, like you. Though I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask when and how she died."

"Sun died in 2353," said Storm softly, then, even more softly, "I...don't know exactly how she died. It appeared to be heart failure, and certainly that was what was put on all the records, and technically that was what it was. But..."

"You're not sure the heart failure was natural."

Storm looked down as she spoke. "It might just be me being paranoid," she said. "Especially since I have no particular reason to believe she was murdered, just the knowledge that..."

"There are reasons for it to be a possibility?" Kolana asked carefully. Of course she knew just what it was, that Storm belonged to the kind of family where her clanmates needed relatively little provocation to kill anyone, including their own. But there was no way she was allowed to know that.

Even now Storm just said, "Yes there are. So it's a possibility. Does it matter? I haven't heard about any reasons why it should."

"It's just a theory," said Kolana, "and it's one Nissian experts by and large reject, but given how popular it is among non-Nissian experts on your race, well, honestly, Storm, I wonder if there's some cultural reason for that." She saw a little bit of indignance on Storm's face at this, and hastily went on, "anyway, the idea is that if a Nissian above a certain age-roughly a century and a half, as the theory goes-dies a violent death, they send out a physic signal which their twin can detect as least unconsciously, and that will sometimes lead to early telepathy."

"So she was murdered, then." Storm said it with an irrational certainty, and a good deal of satisfaction, as if she had been longing for a chance to believe it. "They probably were afraid of us escaping their power had her research succeeded; we would've become so rich we would never have needed anything from them ever again. We might have even wielded power of our own, had either of us ever been interested in such a thing."

With an opening like that, Kolana couldn't not take it. They'd get back to the telepathy in a minute, she told herself, and asked, "What was her research about?"

"Stasis, mostly. How to keep things longer and bring them out, that sort of thing. You know, I've got most of it on the chips Rotto might have looked at, but I can't do a thing with it."

Kolana made a mental note to try to get her hands on that data herself later, but for now she just said, "Pity it wasn't telepathy," and allowed them both a chuckle. "So," she said, leading the conversation into the subject that would dominate it for the rest of their meeting, "I also read..."


End file.
